| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: another, the extravagance of some of his etymologies, and, in general, the
manner in which the fun, fast and furious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us
strongly of the Phaedrus. The jest is a long one, extending over more than
half the dialogue. But then, we remember that the Euthydemus is a still
longer jest, in which the irony is preserved to the very end. There he is
parodying the ingenious follies of early logic; in the Cratylus he is
ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophists and grammarians. The
fallacies of the Euthydemus are still retained at the end of our logic
books; and the etymologies of the Cratylus have also found their way into
later writers. Some of these are not much worse than the conjectures of
Hemsterhuis, and other critics of the last century; but this does not prove
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: the outcome of this bond, for human beings at any rate, a provision is
made by which they may have sons and daughters to support them in old
age.
[18] Reading {oti}, or if with Br. {eti . . . auto}, "with the further
intent it should prove of maximum advantage to itself."
[19] Cf. (Aristot.) "Oecon." i. 3.
"And again, the way of life of human beings, not being maintained like
that of cattle[20] in the open air, obviously demands roofed
homesteads. But if these same human beings are to have anything to
bring in under cover, some one to carry out these labours of the field
under high heaven[21] must be found them, since such operations as the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: influential statesmen of the dynasty, deputy and mayor of an
arrondissement in Paris.
David Sechard's discovery has been assimilated by the French
manufacturing world, as food is assimilated by a living body. Thanks
to the introduction of materials other than rags, France can produce
paper more cheaply than any other European country. Dutch paper, as
David foresaw, no longer exists. Sooner or later it will be necessary,
no doubt, to establish a Royal Paper Manufactory; like the Gobelins,
the Sevres porcelain works, the Savonnerie, and the Imprimerie royale,
which so far have escaped the destruction threatened by bourgeois
vandalism.
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